(Field of the Invention)
The present invention relates to an X-ray fluorescence analyzing system in which a measurement object existing on a semiconductor substrate surface or the like is dissolved and then dried to be held on the semiconductor substrate surface, and the intensity of fluorescent X-rays generated when primary X-rays are emitted on the measurement object is measured.
(Description of Related Art)
Hitherto, for the purpose of performing X-ray fluorescence analysis on minute amounts of contaminants adhered to a sample substrate (semiconductor substrate), there has been an X-ray fluorescence analyzing system including: a sample pretreatment device for dissolving and then drying a measurement object existing on a sample substrate surface or the like to be held on the sample substrate surface; an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer for measuring the intensity of fluorescent X-rays generated when primary X-rays are emitted on the measurement object; and a conveying device for conveying the sample substrate from the sample pretreatment device to the X-ray fluorescence spectrometer (JP Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2003-75374). In this X-ray fluorescence analyzing system, the measurement object existing on the sample substrate is dissolved and then dried on the sample substrate, and measurement is performed by emitting the primary X-rays on the obtained residue. Since the measurement is performed after the dissolving and drying conducted on the sample substrate, in order to use the sample substrate after the measurement as a semiconductor material, restoration of the sample substrate by removing the residue from the sample substrate surface is necessary. When measurement is performed on multiple sample substrates, the sample substrates have been sometimes discarded since the restoration has to be performed on all the sample substrates and great amount of time, effort, and cost are required for the restoration.
The sample substrate has a crystal structure, and diffracted X-rays may be generated together with the fluorescent X-rays when the primary X-rays are emitted on the sample substrate. In response, there is an X-ray analyzing apparatus that can perform measurements while avoiding the diffracted X-rays generated from any position on the sample surface (JP Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2013-104762). This X-ray analyzing apparatus can perform analysis easily and accurately by avoiding the diffracted X-rays, since the X-ray analyzing apparatus has a so-called XY-θ sample stage including a parallel movement unit for parallelly moving a sample table on which the sample substrate is to be placed and a rotating unit for rotating the sample table by using, as the center of rotation, an axis perpendicular with respect to a measurement surface of the sample substrate.
However, the size of the semiconductor substrate (sample substrate) has recently become large, i.e., as much as 450 mm in diameter. Since discarding large-sized sample substrates results in a great amount of loss, the sample substrates are restored and used as semiconductor materials. However, the residues have to be removed from the sample substrate surfaces for restoration, causing a problem of requiring great amount of time, effort, and cost for the restoration. Also having the high performance XY-θ sample stage as in the X-ray fluorescence analyzing system disclosed in JP Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2013-104762 causes a problem regarding increase in cost.